title: Comparison of averaging and regression techniques for estimating Event Related Potentials.
abstract: The traditional method of estimating an Event Related Potential (ERP) is to take the average of signal epochs time locked to a set of similar experimental events. This averaging method is useful as long as the experimental procedure can sufficiently isolate the brain or non-brain process of interest. However, if responses from multiple cognitive processes, time locked to multiple classes of closely spaced events, overlap in time with varying inter-event intervals, averaging will most likely fail to identify the individual response time courses. For this situation, we study estimation of responses to all recorded events in an experiment by a single model using standard linear regression (the rERP technique). Applied to data collected during a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task, our analysis shows: (1) The rERP technique accounts for more variance in the data than averaging when individual event responses are highly overlapping; (2) the variance accounted for by the estimates is concentrated into a fewer ICA components than raw EEG channel signals.
authors.forename: Matthew D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Burns
authors.forename: Nima
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bigdely-Shamlo
authors.forename: Nathaniel J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Kenneth
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kreutz-Delgado
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Makeig
mesh_terms: D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D014796:Visual Perception